


Matters of Faith and Knowledge

by paperiuni



Category: Planescape: Torment
Genre: Friendship, Gen, Philosophy, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-26
Updated: 2011-12-26
Packaged: 2017-10-28 04:22:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,276
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/303680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Fall-From-Grace returns from peril to face another challenge from an old friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Matters of Faith and Knowledge

**Author's Note:**

  * For [yhlee (etothey)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/etothey/gifts).



> Set after the Good Ending of the game.
> 
> The Ubiquitous Wayfarer is an inn in Sigil detailed at least in the AD&D 2nd Edition materials for the Planescape setting. Its particular quirk is that it contains a great number of planar portals, so it seemed an apt place to begin a story.

Her hand dripping blood, Fall-From-Grace steps through the portal.

The common room of the Ubiquitous Wayfarer swirls into view through the blue blaze of the portal, and she is in Sigil again. She lifts the hem of her split skirt to drag a garish stain into it, the blood having bought her passage. Still her hand remains smudged as if with rust, her cuticles dark crescents against her flawless skin. The soot of Gehenna, mixed with live, glowing sparks, covers her from head to foot.

A frisson of attention ripples out across the tables and benches as she shakes out her hair from her hood, free down her back. An off-duty Harmonium officer at a table near the door gives her a suspicious look, then a second, slack-jawed one, glazed with the first pangs of desire. She squares her shoulders and walks in a straight, graceful line to the bar. One can only be what one is. A nature is a thing separate from acting it out.

"Water," she says to the bartender, who only glances at the ash that settles in her wake. Visitors track worse things across the floor in the Wayfarer. She doesn't need the sustenance, but her throat burns with the balefires of the Lower Planes themselves.

An earthenware goblet is set in front of her. The water is clear and likely to be thrice boiled. She slides a shard of fine, inky obsidian across the counter in turn. It will buy her drink for the rest of her stay.

Only then does she turn to the only face in the common room that noticed her and did not turn aside abashed or swear, even if in their deepest darkest heart, to possess her or die trying. She does not know that he ever would have. His secrets are his own; Grace does not ask.

He has nothing on the table before him, save for a curved, shimmering blade. It reflects a light that does not come from the smoky tavern lamps, and it could split the thick trestle table in a single clean blow.

"Gehenna," Dak'kon says in his gritty, ancient voice. "You stink of the furnaces."

"I _look_ of the furnaces, my dear zerth. Were you waiting for me?"

"I _knew_ you would come."

"But of course." She smiles sincerely and drinks of her thrice-boiled water from a Sigil well. "You seem well. I am pleased."

"I _know_ myself. Thus I am well."

"I'll feel better when I've had a bath and a change of attire." She gathers her sleeves gingerly up to her elbows. "But I remain whole."

"And your quest?" His eyes are sharp as the obsidian which with she paid, keen as the _karach_ blade.

She allows her head to dip. "Unfulfilled. I had to leave. The furnaces of Gehenna are ever hungry for fuel, and that plane bears no love for my kind. Its cruelty has no room for invention, only efficiency."

"It is a place of destruction."

"Love cannot destroy?" Her smile turns sad and, she knows, heartbreakingly lovely. "Sometimes it surprises me there's so little of it in the Lower Planes. They might stand to profit a great and terrible deal."

"Many ears listen in this place," Dak'kon rasps. His blade flickers black, then returns to a serene indigo sheen. "Some of them would _know_ what you speak of."

"Oh, very well." She chuckles, takes a dainty sip of water. "I'd posit that love is inimical to their very being, but you and I know better than most how dangerous the idea of change may be. Perhaps it's best we not spread it too wide."

"I agree."

Grace has missed his voice, his razor-edged caution, his calm. It has been long, even to her memory. On the Great Road, time twists, dilates and contracts, spins like hot and pliant glass and freezes into shapes that cannot be named in language. That time has been kind and harsh to Dak'kon. He looks older, his movements sinewy, but slow, thought out. The pain in his eyes is gone, and their dark depths meet hers without qualm or hesitation.

"I, too, would _know_ something. You mean to persist?"

"Yes." Her answer is lucid and immediate. Then her voice turns teasing. "Why, my dear zerth, is that concern I hear in your voice?"

"Your path was mine."

"It was his path, in the end."

"You have made it yours."

"That makes a difference." She presses one hand, marred by the blood residue, flat on the table. "I choose to walk the fields of the Blood War. I have asked for no companion to follow me. The task is my own."

"The oath made to the self binds above all others." He runs thin, hard fingers along the sword, an oily ripple trailing their tips in the changing chaos-matter. "Lies divide the mind. They lead to doubt, justification, more deceit of the self."

Her eyes narrow in scorn that would freeze any other man in the bar with the horror of having offended her. "You are dear to me, my wise wanderer." _Be glad of that now._

"And I _know_ you as only those who have walked together through unknowing can." That is as near to a sentiment of affection as she is likely to ever hear from him. His eyes spark.

The argument is over in that look between them.

"I would not have you carry on my fate," he says, voice gone low and hoarse.

"Is that why you came? To stop me in my fool's errand?" Only the love that runs counter to all she should be bridles her, if not her words. "You are correct in guessing my purpose, but you did not follow him blind and neither do I. I am a Sensate. Experience is my mentor, lover, and guide. It teaches and humbles and challenges me. And if I do not _know_ , Dak'kon, who bears the ever-changing _karach_ , I cannot _become_."

She has stood up. Her hands are pressed to the tabletop, and her voice that cannot help but be pleasant resounds with conviction. The other patrons in their tables do not matter to her, not even for the sake of courtesy.

"I have spoken falsely." Everything about him is still, yet the blade before him shivers as if with nervous tension. "You stand at the beginning, I at the end. But our place is the same, and the path goes on."

"Yes," she whispers. If he speaks out of friendship, she cannot fault his desire, only his delivery.

"You must go on."

"Yes."

"I had guessed as to why. It is not as _knowing_ it is."

Grace holds out her hand and, unprecedentedly, traces her fingers down his gaunt, weathered cheek, aware that there is an everpresent twinge of warmth that her touch sends into his skin. "It's not knowledge that compels me, my dear zerth." She smiles, sorrowful. "It is faith."

Dak'kon allows her touch, bows his head, looks back up at her. "Belief is the iron that tempers into the steel of _knowing_."

Changed and changing, the both of them. For as long as they may.

"Will you sit with me?" She lets her hand fall. "If I plan to drift through the Planes, you are the only one I could ask for directions."

She sees him consider her request. Even though she made it part in jest, he still treats it with gravity. They shared the path, but only some of the journey. His deliberation is short this time. His unsmiling face softens, though one needs to be familiar with it to see the change at all.

"I will."

**Author's Note:**

> Your Planescape request was practically a gift in itself, the way it set the gears in my brain turning at the last minute, so I hope you enjoy this snippet. Have a happy Yuletide!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Matters of Faith and Knowledge](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1158598) by [argentumlupine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/argentumlupine/pseuds/argentumlupine)




End file.
